Urge 5-year Campaign Against Religion in Soviet Russia

June 17, 1929

Moscow (Jun. 15)

A five-year campaign to wipe out religious sentiment, paving the way for the Soviet secular conceptions of life and society, is being urged in the Communist press in connection with the sessions of the Atheists’ Congress now being held here.

The Yiddish Communist daily, batting the Jewish religion and says that this is the more necessary since the greater part of the Jewish members of the Communist party is not connected with the Jewish section of the party. These neutrals object to a specific campaign against the Jewish religion, the paper says. Such an attitude is harmful, it argues.

Mr. Bucharin in his address before the Atheists’ Congress gave what might be regarded as the official pretext for the contemplated campaign against religion. The defense of the political situation are the reasons given by Bucharin. “the fight on religion is one of the most important links in the cultural revolution. Every shade of our class enemies seeks to fortify itself in organizations of the religious type,” he said.

Resentment of a feature in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency service from Russia, recording accurately the Communist authorities’ actions in the confiscation of synagogues and their conversation into workmen’s clubs, was expressed in an editorial in the Yiddish Communist organ, “Emes,” on the occasion of the Atheists’ Congress.

The editorial attempts to give the impression that the synagogues are nowadays converted into workmen’s clubs in Russia not by compulsion but with the consent of the Jewish population. as a proof of this contention the paper says that even the “Moscow Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent discontinued reporting synagogue conversions.” The conclusion have become such a widespread fact and everyday occurrence that even those Jewish Telegraphic Agency busybodies who are eager for Kosher anti-Yevsetzia sensations have stopped cabling about the desecrations of Jewish sanctuaries.”

The decision of the Moscow Soviet to close the synagogue at pimenov (Continued on Page 4)